29 July 2024: The red flag of the movement is reborn

The morning of 29 July broke with a heavy tension across Dhaka. Helicopters chopped through the humid air, sweeping low over rooftops, whilst army units maintained their patrols through the eerily quiet thoroughfares. But beneath the surface of this enforced calm, the streets were simmering. 

The state had spent the previous days attempting to crush the quota reform protests through block raids, mass arrests, and internet blackouts instead of paying heed to the ultimatum. So, on this Monday, the fear evaporated, replaced by a hardened, cold resolve. The movement was resuming.

The catalyst for this renewed defiance came from an unlikely source: a photograph. The day prior, the Detective Branch (DB) chief had uploaded images on Facebook showing six key coordinators of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement—who had been essentially abducted from hospitals and homes into 'protective custody'—sitting around a polished conference table, being served a meal. 

Following this, a coerced video statement was released from the DB office, with the detained leaders calling for an end to the protests. The video was rejected then and there by the protesters. 

DB Police meant it to be a spectacle of state control meant to demoralise, but it backfired spectacularly. It became the rallying point for the protesters online. Moreover, the sheer absurdity of the optics did not escape the highest echelons of the judiciary. On 29 July, the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh delivered a scathing rebuke to the DB police. 

During a hearing on a writ petition demanding the immediate release of the coordinators and an end to the firing of bullets at peaceful protesters, the bench expressed profound outrage.

Addressing the state counsel, the High Court stated precisely what the public was thinking, "Taking someone to the DB office, feeding them like this, and publishing those pictures is akin to mocking the nation. Do not demean the nation in this manner."

The judges sharply questioned the intentions behind such optics, dismantling the state's clumsy attempt to feign benevolence whilst holding students hostage.

On the ground, the students themselves had already reached their limit. The 24-hour ultimatum demanding the unconditional release of the coordinators in DB custody and an end to the nationwide repression had officially expired. Rejecting the forced video statement entirely, coordinators who had evaded capture, including Mahin Sarkar, Abdul Hannan Masud, and Rifat Rashid, announced fresh protest programmes. 

The detentions were relentless. By the end of the day, a staggering 2,822 individuals had been arrested in the capital alone, swept up in a dragnet designed to break the movement's logistical backbone. Yet, the sheer volume of arrests only underscored the state's desperation. You cannot arrest an entire generation. However, the government was yet to give it up. 

The students poured back into the streets. When they attempted to gather in various parts of Dhaka, most notably at the Science Lab intersection, Purana Paltan, and ECB Circle, they were met with the immediate and brutal force of the state apparatus. Police charged at the young demonstrators with batons and fired volleys of tear gas into the crowds, forcefully dispersing the gatherings. Checkpoints choked the city's arteries, and law enforcers used loudspeakers to warn against any assembly.

As the students battled batons and tear gas on the asphalt, a profound display of intergenerational solidarity was taking root at the University of Dhaka. Teachers from various universities across the country converged at the foot of the Aparajeyo Bangla monument, standing resolute under the banner of the 'Anti-Repression Teachers' Rally'.

Photo: Syed Zakir Hossain

It was a deeply moving scene. The educators stood in a heavy, one-minute silence to remember the young lives extinguished by state violence. They demanded an immediate end to the harassment, block raids, and mass arrests of their students. Crucially, they refused to adopt the government's sanitised terminology for the bloodshed. 

From the steps of Aparajeyo Bangla, the teachers unequivocally labelled the atrocities committed against the students as the 'July Genocide,' a term that anchored the moral weight of the tragedy. They proclaimed when students are gunned down and picked up in the dead of night, no teacher can remain sitting quietly at home.

Meanwhile, within the insulated walls of the Ganabhaban, the government was executing political manoeuvres to control the spiralling narrative. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presided over a meeting of the Awami League-led 14-party alliance, where a significant political decision was finalised: the alliance announced an agreement in principle to ban Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, Chhatra Shibir, through an executive order. 

By pinning the entirety of the civil unrest and sabotage squarely on political opposition and extremist allies, the government attempted to delegitimise the genuine, organic fury of the student populace.

Simultaneously, the Cabinet announced that a nationwide day of mourning would be observed the following day, 30 July, to commemorate those killed in the violence. Citizens were urged to wear black badges and offer special prayers.

To the students, this was the ultimate insult—a state-mandated performance of grief orchestrated by the very authorities they held responsible for the killings. They immediately boycotted and rejected the government's declared mourning day. Declaring mourning without ensuring justice, they argued, was nothing but a cruel mockery of the dead.

Instead of black badges, the students chose red.

At around 9:30pm, a press release sent via SMS by coordinator Mahin Sarkar instructed students and citizens across the country to launch a radically different kind of protest. Protesting against the killings and the coerced statements calling off the movement, general students were urged to tie red cloths over their mouths and eyes, take photographs, and build a massive online protest across all social media platforms.

The response was instantaneous and staggering. Overnight, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were flooded with a digital sea of crimson. People from all strata of society—students, parents, professionals, and celebrities—changed their profile pictures to solid red or posted photos of themselves blindfolded and gagged with red fabric. The red cloth symbolised the blood spilled on the streets of Dhaka, Rangpur, and Chattogram, whilst the covered mouths and eyes represented the state's attempts to blindfold the public and gag the coordinators inside the DB office.

By the time 29 July drew to a close, the illusion that the movement had been crushed was entirely shattered. The government had fired its weapons, deployed its helicopters, and arrested thousands, yet it had lost the narrative completely. The streets, both physical and digital, belonged to the youth once more. 

The movement had not just resumed; it had evolved into something untouchable. And it was reaching its crescendo.